Youth for the Third Millennium missionaries spent part of their Christmas break building homes like this one for poor residents of Santa Ana Zirosto, Mexico.

Twenty-five young men from the United States gave of themselves
this Christmas season on a Youth for the Third Millennium
(www.ytm.org) mission to México. They mixed charitable outreach –
such as building or repairing homes for the poor –
with spiritual and cultural visits to sites of interest, including
the tomb of the boy martyr Blessed Jose Luis Sanchez
del Rio.

The 25 young missionaries hailed from Michigan, Louisiana, Ohio
and Texas. They put new roofs on 23 homes and
built one house for a widow. The mission took place
in a little village called Santa Ana Zirosto, Michoacan, two
hours from Cotija de a Paz, the home town of
the founder of the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi.

The students began their mission by flying into Guadalajara, where
they spent the first night at the home of a
local family. “Imagine 25 people squeezing in all the hallways,
bedrooms, tv room and so forth,” said Fr. Juan Guerra,
LC, chaplain for the mission trip. “The family was very
generous in their hospitality, and it set the tone for
the missionaries to be generous with their time and efforts
during the trip.”

A band greeted the missionaries upon their
late-night arrival in Santa Ana Zirosto. The townspeople also served
the missionaries dinner. One memorable event was a outing on
horseback to a church buried in lava when the nearby
Paricutin Volcano erupted in 1943, wiping out the entire town.
All it left standing was the church bell tower and
the altar wall. To this day, smoke still rises from
the volcano’s crater. Visitors said the volcano is so active,
just walking on the ground they felt their shoes becoming
hot.

The missionaries slept in the sacristy of another local
Church, which was built in the 16th century by Augustinian
missionaries.

The grateful townspeople made sure the missionaries did not
leave empty handed: they gave them two large boxes of
avocados, the main local crop and source of income for
the town.

In Cotija, the missionaries visited the Legionaries of Christ
museum and their Crypt. They prayed at the tomb of
Blessed Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio in nearby Sahuayo.

Before
returning to Guadalajara for the trip home. The missionaries visited
Janizio Island. A short boat trip took them to the
town of Pazcuaro, which is kept very much the same
way the Spanish built it in 1500.